Some Thoughts on Prayer
Nothing in this commentary is meant to imply that your prayers are wrong or that you are not praying correctly. Prayer is talking to Father, and you should pray in exactly the way you like.
The purpose of this is to share my own struggles with, and views on, prayer in the hope that it may help some who read it.
Many people feel discouraged in their prayers. They may have seen answered prayers in their own lives but often they seem few and far between. Personally, they may have enjoyed fellowship with the Lord from time to time, but, when praying for others, for healing, for their churches, for peace, for the state of their country or the world, everything seems to fall apart, and results seem very rare.
It seems like the godly suffer and die while the wicked prosper, our churches shrink while society gets more and more depraved, yet seems happy in it all. We know all the platitudes, “His ways are higher”, “He has a better plan even though we don’t understand.” Such things may tempt us to think that prayer doesn’t matter. The lack of perceived results seems to fly in the face of righteousness, goodness, and love. It may seem that Father is saying, “Let my Truth be trampled”, “let sin run amok”, “let the good die and evil prosper.”
I am no expert on prayer. I’m not actually sure there are any. That said, here are a few thoughts.
Like many of you, I have often felt that prayer was mostly ineffective when it comes to things like healing, church growth, geopolitics, societal change, etc. I’ve been there. In fact, there was a time when I stopped praying altogether.
Despite what many preach, Father has not promised us pain-free perfectly healthy temporal lives. One need only look to the Apostle Paul, Timothy, or even Jesus himself to see that believers can have illness, pain, and mental anguish. In none of these lives did Father intervene to supernaturally fix or heal the illness and discomfort.
In my own search for more effective prayer, I began to look at the various prayers found in the New Testament. Paul in particular has some very interesting ones. He prays for things like inner strengthening, increasing knowledge of the love of God, enlightenment to the riches of Father’s grace. We can pray things like these because we know for sure they are in line with the will of God and because if these things are given, all the problems of this world become inconsequential.
Praying for peace is beneficial, but what we mean by peace often has more to do with earthly circumstances than with the inner peace that the Holy Spirit is producing within us and which we then bear outwardly as the fruit of His work.
We are citizens of the Kingdom. We are in this world, but we are not of this world. Our prayer life must reflect that, in my view. For example, we might be very unhappy with the depravity in our society. It’s certainly a good thing to talk with Father about such things. When we begin to get very specific however, what we’re really doing is presuming that I know the best plan or course of action. We presume to advise God. Job learned that such an approach does not work.
Consequently, I have come to take a different approach. Rather than getting into the weeds, so to speak, I find myself praying that Father would continue working for good. That He would grant us to live quiet and peaceful lives. That He would give people wisdom—both our government representatives and “We the people.”
Politics will go the direction of society. It’s naïve for us to think that the world is going to begin acting in godly ways. In the same way, we cannot expect God to cause worldly people to act against their will or to establish or uphold godly principles or governments. Father simply does not contravene the choices people make or the consequences of those choices.
Please note here that I am not saying that Father does not protect and provide for those who are in Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. That protection and provision may appear to us like Him overriding decisions made by people. I am referring here to the general choice of people and nations whether to trust Him, or to live by their senses and by their own strength. Father works in His children by guiding them through His Spirit in their inner being. In this way, He provides for them and protects them.
Praying for church growth is a similar example. A particular assembly of people is one small part of the Church. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a denomination or a building, or any specific organizational structure. When we pray that our specific assembly exist and prosper according to our own view of the matter, we are assuming that we know how best to accomplish Father’s plan for us and those around us. Let me try to clarify this.
What if Father knows that the dissolution of our specific gathering or our specific building or our specific organizational structure will lead to a much deeper, more mature, and more personal assembly in houses or with some other structure or that it will spawn several vibrant assemblies and bless many more? What if He knows that when our current community disperses several of us will nurture and help others who might otherwise not flourish as well? What if He knows that a day is coming when public assembly is outlawed and He is working to prepare people for such a time?
Here’s what I’m getting at. We can pray that we would preach and teach the gospel accurately and boldly. We can pray that our lives, and those of our church assembly, would manifest Christ to those around us. We can rest in the certain knowledge that God is going to be on board with such prayers. The word teaches that these things are His desire.
Regarding people dying or not being healed, I think that this is how the (fallen) temporal world works. Thorns and thistles grow, weeds infest our gardens, insects eat our produce, we become ill, we become disabled, and we die. Father has not exempted those in Christ from the effects of living here. We will experience grief and all sorts of tribulation. Yet it can be well with our souls because in the Kingdom of which we are ambassadors, everything is well, and all is at peace. What He has done is guarantee our inheritance and our place in that Kingdom. We walk in it now by faith. One day we will walk in it physically as well.
So, God does essentially say, "Let sin run amok", "Let My truth be trampled", "Let good and godly believers die and the wicked prosper." He makes it rain on the just and the unjust. Everyone on earth faces the same temptations, ills, and evils.
If the world we live in were perfect for those in Christ, then like Satan did with Job, the world would say that we have no real choice in loving God. They would rightly say that we love Him because He bribes us and pays us off.
When the world sees us live differently in the midst of the chaos because we have faith that Father keeps His promises, then they see incontrovertibly that our love for God is genuine.
Father never contravenes anyone’s will. He stands at the door and knocks, and He never barges in. He draws people to Himself, but He never drags them kicking and screaming.
Trust Father. Trust that He knows what is best and that He is always working for good in the midst of chaos. Trust that even our faltering prayers are being perfectly communicated and acted upon because the Spirit is interceding for us in a language of which we know nothing.
He loves us. He hears us. He is faithful.
